sraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday received a government report presenting the findings of a special governmental inquiry committee into the death of Muhammad Al-Durrah, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, during the second Intifada in September 2000 in an exchange of fire in the Netzarim Junction.
The 36-page report, titled "The France 2 Al-Durrah Report, its Consequences and Implications", shows that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) fire did not kill or injure Muhammad al-Durrah or his father Jamal, and that the France 2 channel tv footage was edited to mislead.
The special committee had been tasked with reviewing the incident.
The Al-Durrah affair has its origins in a media report first aired by the French public television channel France 2 on September 30, 2000. The report claimed to show the killing of the Palestinian boy, targeted along with his father, according to the report, by fire from an Israeli position. The story was quickly relayed worldwide by the international media, which repeated the report's claim and Muhammad al-Durrah became a Palestinian icon of the second intifada. The report had the immediate effect of harming Israel's international standing and fanning the flames of terror and hate.
At first, the IDF accepted responsibility for the boy's death. However, an internal IDF inquiry committee's findings led the IDF to retract its claim of responsibility and state that it was much more plausible that the two were injured by Palestinian gunfire.
The government review of the incident and its implications found that “the France 2 report’s central claims and accusations had no basis in the material which the station had in its possession at the time… There is no evidence that the IDF was in any way responsible for causing any of the alleged injuries to Jamal or the boy.”
The committee determined that “contrary to the report’s claim that the boy is killed, the committee’s review of the raw footage showed that in the final scenes, which were not broadcast by France 2, the boy is seen to be alive” and that he “moved his arm and turned his head.”
The report was presented by the Minister of International Affairs, Strategy and Intelligence, Yuval Steinitz, in the presence of the Director General of the Ministry of International Affairs and Strategy, Yossi Kuperwasser.
Prime Minister Netanyahu had directed then Minister of Strategic Affairs Yaalon to set up the governmental review committee in September 2012. The purpose of the committee was to examine the Al-Durrah affair in light of the continued damage it has caused to Israel, and to formulate the Government of Israel's position with regards to it.
"It is important to focus on this incident – which has slandered Israel's reputation. This is a manifestation of the ongoing, mendacious campaign to delegitimize Israel. There is only one way to counter lies, and that is through the truth. Only the truth can prevail over lies," said Mr Netanyahu
The committee was comprised of representatives of relevant government ministries and official bodies, and consulted with outside experts.
Following an extensive review of materials related to the affair, the committee determined that "the France 2 report's central claims and accusations had no basis in the material which the station had in its possession at the time of the report."
Contrary to the report's claim that the boy is killed, the committee's review of the raw footage showed that in the final scenes, which were not broadcast by France 2, the boy is seen to be alive.
The review revealed that there is no evidence that Jamal or the boy were wounded in the manner claimed in the report, and that the footage does not depict Jamal as having been badly injured. In contrast, there are numerous indications that the two were not struck by bullets at all.
The review showed that it is highly-doubtful that bullet holes in the vicinity of the two could have had their source in fire from the Israeli position, as implied in the France 2 report.
"The report was edited and narrated in such a way as to create the misleading impression that it substantiated the claims made therein," the review says mentioning the fact that :
-Over time numerous additional inconsistencies and contradictions have come to light, and question marks have been raised regarding nearly every aspect of the report.
- The report relied entirely on the station's local stringer, without additional evidence for his claims, and this despite the fact that there were numerous other media crews on the scene. The stringer's various claims regarding the affair in the years since the incident have been characterized by repeated contradictions and falsehoods.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said "the Al-Durrah affair demonstrates the need for media outlets to implement the highest professional and ethical standards when covering asymmetric conflicts. There is a particular need for international media outlets to critically evaluate information provided by local stringers, especially in arenas in which repeated attempts to stage or fabricate media items have been documented. An additional lesson of the Al-Durrah affair is that countries which scrupulously adhere to the international laws of armed conflict must not remain complacent in the face of misleading or mendacious media coverage. Rather they must investigate the claims in a thorough and timely manner and present their findings to the public."
"On a more general level, the Al-Durrah affair must serve as a wake-up call to the journalistic community covering the Israeli-Arab arena. In nearly every major round of fighting since the affair, from the 2002 Operation "Defensive Shield" through the 2006 Second Lebanon War, Operations "Cast Lead" (2008-2009) and "Pillar of Defense" (2012), and the Mavi Marmara flotilla affair (2010), echoes of Al-Durrah were clearly heard in the form of unsubstantiated claims by Western media of intentional Israeli attacks against civilians and particularly children. In a number of cases, staged scenes or entirely baseless claims were reported as authentic, either in an intentionally-misleading manner or without the most elemental fact-checking. While in some cases these reports were later corrected, they nevertheless fueled hatred, encouraged terror and contributed to the delegitimization of the Jewish state. Many of the misleading reports had their source in local stringers working for international networks. The Al-Durrah affair underscores the need for news networks to exercise extra caution in evaluating reports by such stringers who are not necessarily objective and who often operate within undemocratic societies."
"At the same time, the Al-Durrah affair demonstrates that countries committed to scrupulously adhering to international law while combating terror cannot remain complacent in the face of inaccurate or mendacious media reports. The potentially-lethal consequences of such coverage in both the short and long-term mean that they cannot simply wait in the hope that the controversy will die down on its own. Rather, such countries must thoroughly investigate the media claims in a timely manner and present their findings in the public arena. It is our hope that in presenting Israel's position regarding the Al-Durrah affair, describing the affair's consequences and noting its implications, we can moderate some of the damage done by this pernicious narrative and help prevent the repeat of such incidents in the future."
According to Israeli Minister Yuval Steinitz ‘’the Al-Durrah affair is a modern-day blood libel against the State of Israel, alongside other blood libels like the claims of an alleged massacre in Jenin. The France 2 report was utterly baseless.’’
The government report comes in advance of an anticipated May 22 ruling in a Paris Court of Appeals, where France 2′s Jerusalem bureau chief Charles Enderlin sued Philippe Karsenty, director of a media monitoring agency in France, for defamation. Karsenty wrote publicly that Enderlin should be fired for his broadcast of the confrontation at the Netzarim junction, which Karsenty called “a media hoax.”
The French channel sued Karsenty in 2004 after he had claimed that all of the video footage from Enderlin's September 30, 2004 news report were staged for the production of the news report.
In September 2007, a French court instructed the TV channel to hand over the entire, unedited footage shot that day, thus reopening the case.
In the full video, Muhammad Al-Durrah can be seen waving his hand, moving his leg and without any visible bloodstains, despite claims made during the news report that the boy had died.
The court also received as evidence a forensic specialist's report, according to which there was no ballistic possibility that the boy died as a result of IDF fire. In addition, the report claimed that there was no evidence supporting the claim that the boy or his father were even injured, thus reigniting accusations that the video might have been staged after all.
After a long and grueling trail, Karsenty was acquitted. The network nonetheless appealed and France's appellate court turned the wheels of history back.
The father of Muhammad Al-Durrah, who survived the ordeal, relayed his version before the media, showing the scars that he incurred in the incident. The claim prompted Dr. Yehuda David of the Tel Hashomer Hospital in Tel Aviv to reveal that the scars were actually the result of a surgery the father had undergone years earlier, after he was attacked by Hamas operatives who suspected him of collaborating with Israel.
Professor Richard Landes, a Boston University medievalist who runs the Al Durrah Project, agreed with Karsenty and said that “Enderlin should retire in disgrace.”
“He not only edited out critical footage that undermined the story he wanted to tell,” — of Israeli troops killing Palestinian children — “but once the story hit and inspired horrific violence, he doubled down and tried to protect his reputation instead of re-examining his work, as a journalist with integrity should do,” Landes told daily The Times of Israel.
Charles Enderlin rejected the government’s report and expressed frustration, telling The Jerusalem Post that the investigators never made contact with him.